A
monarch with a full tank can carry 140 mg of fuel. When it flies without
flapping it can travel 1,060 hours on that single tank of fuel.

In
contrast, when a monarch flaps its wings it burns its fuel quickly.
When it flies its fastest a monarch flaps up to 12 times every second!
This fast flight is called “escape flight.” A monarch
burns 12.7 mg of fuel every hour during escape flight.

Try
this monarch math. You’ll see why soaring, gliding and riding
with the wind are so important to migrating monarchs:

For
how many hours can a monarch butterfly fly before it runs out
of fuel?